


Trivia Night

by miss_nettles_wife



Category: The Doctor Blake Mysteries
Genre: M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Mood Whiplash, Sex, matthew no, tickle slap, trivia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 07:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9872876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_nettles_wife/pseuds/miss_nettles_wife
Summary: Matthew Lawson is excellent at trivia.





	

**Author's Note:**

> oh no.

If Charlie Davis was a trivia game, Matthew Lawson would ace it. 

Question: What time does Charlie sneak away from Lucien and Jean to make his appearance at Matthew’s place for the night?   
Answer: Ten thirty. 

He answered the door slowly. He liked to make Charlie wait on occasion. Perhaps it was slightly cruel, but it made his lips taste all the sweeter. He is in his civvies, plain shirt, tan trousers. Very plain. Some might even say as plain as the man himself. Lawson would disagree with you. Once you got to know him, Charlie was as fascinating and complex as any other man that he was aware of. Perhaps more so. Charlie hardly makes it into the house before he falls into Matthew’s open arms, desperately pressing their lips together in what any other man may call a kiss. Matthew would call it a plea. 

Question: What does Charlie taste of?   
Answer: Sweet. 

He always tasted sweet, but he suspected it was only his imagination playing tricks on him, and Charlie tasted like any other grown man. Stale milk, cigarettes and whatever he last ate. But if he does, then he doesn’t notice. All he can taste is sweet. Like honey, perhaps. 

Now that was an idea, wasn’t it? He heard somewhere once that some exotic people he doesn’t remember the name of use food in the name of intimacy. Charlie is always so stoic and well presented. Matthew doesn’t think he’s ever seen Charlie physically dirty. The worst being disheveled. And he would really, really like to. Sticky and sweet, throwing away his inhibitions, he files the thought away for some other time. When he has time to plan it, and then to convince Charlie. 

Question: How many times a week is Charlie willing to engage him?  
Answer: As often as he would like. 

Charlie was always willing to let Matthew do as he pleased. Which may be concerning in some scenarios, what Matthew pleased, was wringing every single drop of pleasure out of Charlie Davis as he possibly could in a single night. He was sure if he had more than a single night then he would very easily and very willingly be able to make Charlie feel even better. 

He thinks about it often, proposing a weekend where Matthew can do as he pleases, to look at him, touch him and feel him. He wonders about the proposed use of handcuffs he’d heard about so many times in his youth, and if Charlie would let him handcuff him. Maybe, he decided. He thought that it might be fun, to try something new. He leant down to kiss Charlie again, harder this time, until he relented and gave Matthew his open mouth. 

Question: What is the fastest way to bring Charlie Davis to his knees.   
Answer: Anything to do with his hair. 

Matthew couldn’t explain it, but Charlie has sensitive hair. He didn’t have much experience with it prior to Charlie. He’s regarded his own hair with fond disinterest, but Charlie took a great deal of pride in the hours he spent styling his hair. Fair enough; Matthew took a great deal of pride in how quickly he was able to mess it up. And boy does he mess it up. It feels slick in his hand, sort of sticky. Charlie, he suspects, probably likes annoying him with the feel of it more than anything else. But he doesn’t mind so much because the right tug has Charlie gasping into his lips and he likes that. Despite the slightly sticky feeling of too much wax, he tugs again trying for the magic angle that made Charlie’s knees give in. 

He find it, and Charlie crumples against him, gasping, face dusted red with blush. Releasing his hair, Matthew hooked his hands under the bottom of Charlie’s shirt, pulling it up over his head. Their kiss is briefly interrupted and when the shirt is clear Charlie launches again as if they haven’t kissed in a thousand years.

Question: How many moles does Charlie have on his chest?   
Answer: ten. 

Charlie’s shirt is in a crinkled heap on the floor before they even make it to the bedroom. Matthew’s hands trail up and down his exposed chest. Charlie is very different to him, with his clothes off. Matthew is well aware of his own scars. Shrapnel mostly. From the old days, the war. There’s a large burn scar on his left side that he hates. He’d been shot, too. In the arm. Hadn’t even gone all the way through. He leaves taking his shirt off to the last second. Charlie is different. His skin is clear for the most part, no really prominent scars to distract from the seemingly endless expanse of pale skin. 

He loves it. He knows the feel of it by memory. Traces old routes with his fingers while Charlie tilts his head back to give Matthew his throat. The familiar taste of soft, fragile skin. He dreams of some day being able to take a bite of it. To make a mark on it that Charlie will see for days and remember. He likes that idea. But there’s no point in him doing so now, Charlie would probably never come back if he did something he didn’t like. And rightly so. Matthew wanted it to be between them, and he wanted him to keep coming over. 

Question: What part of Matthew is Charlie most fascinated by?  
Answer: The large burn scar on his side. 

Initially, Matthew hadn’t wanted him to touch it. He didn’t even like touching it. When he showered, he ignored it. Dried it as quickly as he could, quick to get his shirt on. It unnerved him, the way that all sensation was blunted by it. He’d thought Charlie would ignore it the same way that he did. He doesn’t. After seeking out with his lips that it was alright, and being the sort of boy he is, Charlie asks every time, he touches it gently. 

His fingers practically ghost up his side, feeling valleys of scar that he hates to even look at, treating it with such reverence. As if he was grateful he was allowed to touch it. He asked once, why Charlie wanted to touch it so badly; it was just an old burn. Surely Charlie, growing up in such a time that old burns were rather depressingly commonplace, he would have seen and possibly touched one before. Charlie hadn’t had a reply for him that made sense. He described it as beautiful, which Matthew found ridiculous, but it was nice. It was good to have someone else’s hands on him. Good hands, that was to say. Not doctor hands, not nurse hands. Charlie’s hands. 

As poorly circulated and cold as they were, his fingers felt right. 

Question: How does Charlie sound?   
Answer: Like Matthew’s own personal chorus. 

He sounds like tiny breathy moans, and the odd gasp. Charlie is a naturally quiet person until provoked, and such a disposition followed him into the bedroom. Matthew has experienced all kinds over the years. Loud to soft. Charlie falls some place in the middle, but leaning towards soft. He sounds lovely, is really what Matthew wants to say. It’s not until the very end, where they’re not dressed, and the pressure is building that Charlie really makes noise. Moans. Crying. The works. 

Matthew thinks it’s beautiful. Charlie thinks it’s ugly. But the pressure mounts, up and up. Charlie’s face is hidden in his shoulder, where he is breathing prayers against his skin, his arms lung around his neck, clutching his own wrist like he might fall. They’re both undressed by now, and Matthew has selected his favorite position. It has worked better in the past with women, slender and smaller. Charlie is tall and broad shouldered and almost too big to be in his lap. He feels his toes curl in the carpet as Charlie knows exactly how to move his body by now. He, just like Matthew, seems to have memorized every motion he liked, and the ones he didn’t. He put his arms around Charlie’s waist, pressing him forever upwards. 

And then with one final cry, it’s all over. 

Question: Who is the loneliest bastard in Ballarat?   
Answer: Matthew Lawson. 

For a long time, he didn’t move, couldn’t move, in fact. His shirt is sticking to him like a second skin, damp with sweat. A bead of the stuff travelled down his face. (It’s not a tear, he’ll deny that until death) He sat up, and glanced down at his hands, repulsed. He quickly wiped away the traces of his dallying onto a handkerchief on his sideboard, and took a glance at the other side of his bed. Empty. Like it had been for months.  
He stood, intending to dispose of the handkerchief permanently, he doesn’t think he could bare to use it ever again. He tossed his handkerchief into the waste basket in his bathroom and stopped to look at himself, wandering around pantless and weary. And he feels worse. Taking a seat on the side of his cream coloured bath tub he let out a slow breath and tried to gather himself back up. 

Question: Do beautiful corpses exist?   
Answer: Yes they do. 

After the war, he thought that there was nothing beautiful about death, and to some extent, he still believes it. Death isn’t beautiful. It’s an ending. A finished. Done. All the things he wasn’t ready for. When he closes his eyes, it’s still burned onto his eyelids. 

He could have passed for alive, Charlie was so pale in life, death only seemed to extenuate it like he was standing under lights. His brilliant blue eyes were hollow, thought. Ironically, this was the first thing that Matthew saw that cemented he was dead. Not the trickle of red that had escaped his lips, or the wound he was still clutching, even in death.   
It’s still there, burned into his mind, and he doesn’t want to file Charlie away with his war memories. Those were the bad times, and he treated them as such, locked away, only visited on the deepest darkest of nights, when Charlie was so deeply asleep he wouldn’t hear Matthew cry. He instead take the time to sit on his bathtub side and lament his fate, as well as his own actions. He sat for hours in the morgue, with him. Irrationally, his brain had provided the reasoning that he didn't want Charlie to be alone. That he would be scared if Doctor Harvey put him in the freezer. The logical side of his brain put forward that he was dead; he didn't care. But it's hard to listen to that part of your mind when youre sitting with the body of the only boy you ever truly wanted to spend your life with. 

Lucien fell into the bottle that night. Matthew knows because so did he. He spent the night talking about Charlie. His face. His eyes. How much Matthew loved him. He spilt it all, and didn't even care. Charlie probably wanted Lucien to know. Wanted him to know that he was loved. Truly and deeply. If he cared, he didn't make a comment on anything other then to ask if he'd been happy. And he had. He knows

Charlie’s body has barely cooled, and yet here he was, acting like teenager who just fell in love for the first time. It could, almost, be little bit sweet. But it’s not, because Charlie is dead and gone and it he isn’t coming back. The funeral was weeks ago. His mother had collected most of his things soon after. Matthew has a dressing gown that Charlie stole from him sitting on the back of a decorative chair but he can't pick it up. Can hardly bare to look at it. Not with these sinful hands. But maybe one day, when it hurts less; if that day ever comes. 

Matthew Lawson knows almost all there is to know about Charlie Davis. Prides himself on it, in fact. Except for one thing. 

Question: Who killed Charlie Davis?   
Answer: Matthew wishes he knew.


End file.
